


wrestle me free

by shadoedseptmbr



Series: L'essai Et Repose [11]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Funeral Blues, Grief, Post Alchera, lethargy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27195329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadoedseptmbr/pseuds/shadoedseptmbr
Summary: Kaidan, post Alchera, finding his balance.
Relationships: Kaidan Alenko/Female Shepard
Series: L'essai Et Repose [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1937545
Comments: 34
Kudos: 25





	1. down

It’s a blur.

_Anderson pinning oakleaves to his collar, grasping his hand to shake it. The buzz of a commendation being read, the Commander’s report-speak. Anderson had...said something. Looking up and seeing his mother, stoic and proud in a deep red suit but her eyes shining with tears._

_He was on Earth._

_They’d brought her back._

_Not her. An empty dress uniform, still so new you could smell the dye, just like the one he was wearing. A collection of bright bottle caps, each plugged with a hole in the center that Anderson had dropped in before they closed the lid. The string she’d had, as far as he knew, still wrapped around the headsup display in the MAKO, so they’d clink as she cackled, plummeting the tank down a cliff._

_A very tall, very blond human with a pale blue asari shadow, leaned over and spoke something in a language he didn’t recognize. The packet of chocolate syrup they tucked into the casket he knew well, though._

_A very frail nun patted the jacket. Leaving nothing behind but sighs._

_He left her._

_His dad’s perfect posture and his hand pressed against his heart, trying to will some life into him from across the room. They knew. He hadn’t told them but...the things he didn’t say seem to have filled it in._

_They’d brought nothing back of her. It’s empty. It’s an empty box and an emptier symbol draped in a blue flag._

_He didn’t bring her back._

_She must have hit atmo. There isn’t anything to find if she did. No one abandoned her, least of all him and she’d thrown him off the ship._

_Just before she’d turned to go after Joker, he’d seen her eyes. Huge and silver grey behind her visor._

_She’d paused. Stared back at him._ As if _..._

Kaidan wakes up, if you can call it that, in his dad’s ancient green leather chair; the one that creaks if you sit down wrong. With his fingers pressed into the tufts on the old leather buttons. His dad has been reading the ag report out loud.

Apples are selling 15 credits a bushel. 

He’s got one of his mother’s flannel quilts in his lap, velvet soft with a pattern of wine colored leaves on a pale grey background. He’d asked his mom for one of these. For Shepard’s sparse cabin, where she was always a little cold. 

_She was…_

“Hey, there, Kai.” His father’s hazel eyes are as sharp as they’ve ever been, scanning his face and clearly relieved to find someone looking back, now.

“Hey, dad.” His voice is rusty. He can’t remember the last time he spoke. 

“You with us?”

“Yeah. I’m…”

He sets the pad aside. “Nope. You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Kai. You’ve had a...a bad time of it, of late.” 

_But I’m still here._

“She’s...was...special.”

His mother has padded into the room and she’s got a hand, still neatly manicured in the dark red that matched her suit, on his shoulder. “Then you made her proud, darling. Just like you make us.” His mother’s voice is low and gentle, a far cry from her usual clipped tones and he reaches up to clasp her hand. Warm and scented with her sandalwood hand creme. 

His dad pushes up from the sofa. “Let’s get some dinner in you. You’ve got to be starving.” 

Kaidan shifts and yeah. He can feel the light headed warning that he hasn’t eaten in way too long. 

“Kaidan.” His mother’s hand is pressing him down as well and he gives in to the unvoiced entreaty. 

“I can probably make it to the table.” 

His mother is already setting up the bamboo trays they’d eaten a million meals off of in front of hockey games and documentaries. “Of course you can, but there is no reason for you to do so. It’s been years, darling. Let us help.”

He can smell the sharp tang of tomato and his dad’s rye bread. Elek sets down a bowl of rich creamy soup and a thick slice of bread cut into slender fingers with toasted yellow cheese smeared across it, the hint of mustard peeking out beneath. 

“Take it slow. You’ve been living on those protein shakes.” His dad warns him and he nods, taking a spoonful. 

“How...long?” His bare feet are on a fuzzy abstract rug he doesn’t remember. It had been plain hardwood when he grew up, but they’d had a dog and a monster of a furry cat to keep up with and his dad hated a vacuum.

His mother sips her cinnamon scented tea and murmurs, “ Two days. You made it through your ceremony and the...ah...memorial, just fine. I didn’t realize there was anything wrong at all until you staggered a little, leaving the Admiral’s Hall. Captain Anderson caught your arm, thank goodness, or you’d have fallen. I don’t think anyone else noticed, except the doctor. They helped us bustle you into the cab.” 

“Your doctor gave you something for the migraine and we brought you home. You came downstairs last night, sometime.”

“Sorry, I took your chair, Dad.”

“That’s what it’s for.” Elek still drank his soup from a mug, years of on duty meals sticking with him. 

A few spoonfuls in, a few slivers of cheese toast, and Kaidan can focus on things past his nose. The living room is the same, bookshelves and comfortable armchairs with bold graphic pillows. The standing brass lamp over his shoulder. The rollbacked sofa his folks sat on, another blanket tossed over the back, the low, carved cedar table with its curved legs in front of the huge window overlooking a stormy Bay. “Raining?”

“It has been, for days. Snow up in the mountains. We had a small storm blow in yesterday but it’s just hanging over us. Gonna have to go to the orchard tomorrow and help do some clean up. Jakob’s sending the vineyard crew, once they’ve finished.” There’s a question in the tone of his dad’s voice.

He tries to remember. “I’ve...I’ve got leave for a few more days, I think, if you’d like some company.”

Elek nods to the brass bin, still next to the door as always. There’s a square package, wrapped in familiar tape and his eyes skitter back to the flicker of the fire. “That came yesterday, take a look but you said you had a couple weeks. If they wanted you back earlier, they’d ping you.”

“Yeah.” 

“It’s not how we wanted you to come home, but we will take you for as long as you can.” There’s a quiet jingle from the jazz station his mom keeps tuned in most of her working hours. Glancing up, she’s left the door open to her office. He can see the edge of her pale grey desk, neat and orderly. The lumpy clay starship he made in third grade still perched on the corner, painted blue with white streaks, orange at the base.

He nodded. “I’d hoped to come back. To...uh. She wanted to meet you. In person.”

She smiled, sadly. “Yes. You must speak of her, if you want.”

There’s a throb in the hollow of his throat. God, he’s cold. “Yeah. Not...not, just yet.” He should, he knows, get it out of his system. He won’t be able to, once he goes back. 

If. 

If he goes back. 

He glances down at himself, in a pair of wrinkled button up cotton pyjamas, one leg half rolled up. “I should go...clean up.”

“Everything is where you remember it, Kai. I put some new clothes on the end of the bed, since…” his dad lifts his hands, a faint frown behind the beard that’s gone iron-grey since Kaidan left home. 

Since everything he owned except the new dress uniform and a storage locker back on Arcturus was space junk. “Thanks.” He pushes up, gives himself a moment to balance. There’s a buzz under his skin he hasn’t felt in ...months. Like the nodes are under used, building up a charge. Yeah. He definitely should go to the orchard and ...let go, a little.

His room at the top of the stairs, to the right. They’ve refloored the landing, in light wood to match the stairs.

The room is gloomy, the same old blackout curtains drawn. He pushes back the heavy fabric and lets the grey light from outside filter in over the rumpled bed. Out of reflex, he straightens the duvet. 

There’s a stack of shirts, a neatly folded set of the soft prewashed tshirts he’s always liked, in light blue and grey and a couple dark pairs of jeans on the trunk at the foot of his old bed. The acrid scent of dye hits him.

Kaidan opens his closet and- dragging his arm like he’s pushing through syrup- amid the stored light coats and suit bags, finds what he’s looking for. 

A pair of jeans that had been too big for him after BaAt but might fit now. An old button down he doesn’t remember.

The bathroom is unchanged, still the same pale green tile and grey counter, old copper taps. It’s probably even the same ivy, trailing from a high window pot. The shower water takes a few seconds to warm, unlike shipboard. He stands in it, lets it run from ice to steam until his skin stings under the pelting heat. 

There’s no rush, no VI reminder to be considerate of crewmates. It’ll stay hot and no one’s going to barge in, crack jokes, sing sea shanties, ask about what he thinks of the idea of heat sinks becoming standard, ramble through mental navigational calculations. 

No one’s going to lisp into his ear with a faint drawl about how if he stays in there much longer she’s gonna…

His skin flickers blue and he drops his head back into the water, rubs the soap into his hair.

His dad’s olive oil soap, square and faintly lemony. He’d been buying it from an old lady in the market off of the square for as long as Kaidan can remember. Surely the lady had ...well, maybe she had a kid who liked to make soap, too. 

The towels stacked to the side are still fluffy and white and smell faintly of lavender. He rubs his hair almost dry.

The jeans fit okay, looser than he expects. They’re old and soft and cedary, from the closet. There’s a pair of light brown field boots. His dad, despite being taller and skinnier, had the same shoe size so he doesn’t hesitate to lace them up over the long pair of wool socks. It’s chillier here than the shipboard temperature and he’s grateful for the extra warmth. 

He’s not acclimated to the weather, anymore, maybe. Too long aboard ship or in his armor, tuned to his personal specs. He’d run hot for so long...it hits him- it’s a bad sign. He should go back down and eat. Again. 

He buttons the thick navy chamois shirt over one of the tshirts, and looks in the mirror hung on the back of the door. Ignores the new lines creased along his mouth and between his eyes. He needs a shave. And a haircut. 

If he’s going back.

If he can stand to look at the stars from a bridge and know she’s not out there, not about to tell him about the time she hiked across an asteroid in that system they’ve just skipped through to see the sun rise on half a tank of oxygen. 

Just for the hell of it, of course.

It had been six months since he met her. How had she dug herself into his skin like that, so quickly?

He reaches for the knob and doesn’t quite fling the blank eyed, haggard man reflected there away.


	2. sideways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> distractions

Kaidan kisses his mother on her smooth powdered cheek as he trades up to the front, sliding in next to his dad.. He could be ten or twelve or twenty. Mom on her way to her campus office and he and Elek on their way to the orchard.

His dad flicks the radio from his local news station almost fast enough for him not to hear her name; the twang of old folk quietly charming in the background of the whine of the engine. Elek’s never been one to endure silence too long, but he doesn’t require chatter.

Once they’re out of the city, he nudges a cooler bag over to Kaidan with his elbow. “Yuna made blondies last night.”

She had. Thick and cakey and made with real butter from the heritage Jerseys the neighbors kept, the black walnuts from the trees by the orchard barn. About twice the calorie load of a biotic protein bar and the only thing that had kept Kaidan from starving until he went to BAat and learned how to feed himself properly. It was also the only thing his mother could bake, cadging the recipe from the bakery that supplied her favorite delicate green tea petit fours and floral scented macaroons and following it meticulously like she was mixing ingredients for an explosive. He’s licking butterscotch scented crumbs from his fingers before he realized he was eating. 

There's a plaid enameled vacuum sealed flask tucked next to the brownies and wrapped sandwiches and he hesitates before he opens it.

“It’s tea.” Elek assures him.”You said, before...Anyway, It’s not coffee, go ahead.”

“Dad…”

He drops his hand on Kaidan’s shoulder and gives a squeeze. “She’d've been a terrible Marine if she wasn’t soaked in the stuff like all the rest of us.” 

The ride is smooth enough he doesn’t spill a drop as he fills an enameled cup. He sits with it a moment, breathing in the vanilla and orange spice fumes. One of his mother’s favorites and laced with dark honey. More calories for their weird kid. He can’t help a weak laugh. 

Elek chuckles with him and kilometers spin out beneath them. Hope town proper starts to gleam on the horizon to the west and they take a wide curve to the north, heading up the canyon.

“That shirt looks better on you than me, you should keep it.”

“I might, it’s comfortable.” 

The sun is well above the horizon when they drop down into the valley. The vineyard crew is already at work and Ivor, his cousin’s foreman, lopes over to greet Elek and shake his hand. He gives Kaidan a look over, a shrug and a grunt before waving over a young woman and speaks in her ear. She trots over to the utility vehicle parked just off the porch, grabs a tool. She hands him a long pair of loppers and points him to a huge pile of brush. 

He spends the next hour or so chopping the smaller branches into kindling. It’s a make work job, but they don’t know him, and Elek lets him find his own feet. 

Midday, he hasn’t chopped off a toe or anything. Elek drops a sandwich and a water in front of him and after the snack, he’s allowed an axe. The handle is smooth and polished with a decade or two of use and it feels real and solid in his hands, like a good pistol. It takes him a few swings, a near miss and a hasty barrier, but he finds a rhythm. By late afternoon, they’ve got a decent supply of firewood. 

By the time dinner’s been spread on the trestle tables set in the yard, Kaidan’s filthy, soaked in sweat and bits of bark and debris.. He’s got a civilian medigel patch on his elbow from a slip onto the stone path. But he figured out a way to move the one fallen tree they couldn’t get to on wet, fragile ground with a carefully timed pull over the low berry bushes and onto the rockier shelf where Ivor and his assistant could hook it to a tractor. 

Kaidan’s actually hungry, and he lines up along the spread buffet. He’s got a bowl of thick lamb stew and half a loaf of bread in him before he starts to pay attention to the conversation.

“I don’t know, Elek. I can’t think of when any of us were exposed. We don’t get to the sort of places you and Yuna used to.”

Exposed? “One of your kids is biotic, Ivor?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I was telling your father. Aimee is our youngest. Just six now. Pushed herself into a wall so hard trying to fight her mother putting her shoes on, she broke her arm. The province has a school set up, for the little ones.” He lifts his bushy, sandy eyebrows. “I don’t like to tell you, it worries me some though. Knowing...well.” His broad, callused hands lift with spread fingers- helplessly, indicating Kaidan and the sky.

Kaidan hurries to reassure him. “No. Hey, no don’t worry about that, now. One, the training has gotten so much better, like you said. The local schools are way better set up so she doesn’t have to go far from home. And, by the time Aimee gets to be an adult I’ve got no doubt there’s gonna be way more opportunities than just. Uh, what I do. There’s been a lot of attention given to what needs to change, now that there’s more of us. If she does end up wanting that, I’m hearing good things about the new Ascension project. My CO knows...knew the new head of programs over at Grissom Academy. Liked her a lot.” 

Nobody but Elek notices how Kaidan trails off and he covers, patting the foreman on the back, following up with reassurances. Kaidan drinks his beer and lets the rest of the conversation -a steelhead run up river, a new market competitor for the specialty cordials, the taster who’d come by the winery- flow around him and waits for the chair he’s sitting in to stop spinning. It takes a while. They’ve brought out an urn of coffee to go with dried fruit pies, and the scent of it...he grabs another bottle of lager and waves to his dad, now running his books on the porch.

Elek had dragged the old willow porch furniture out before dinner and commandeered the low bench covered in a stuffed mat and old wool blankets. The morning had been enough work for him, when there’s a pack of young folk to order around. There’s a stack of ledger books at his elbow and a squared contractor’s pencil behind his ear as he runs numbers. He glances up, as Kaidan joins him as if to reassure himself and his shoulders relax another notch. 

“Why do you even leave the orchard anymore? You always seem...you’ve always loved it, here.”

Elek chuckles. “Well, I guess so. But your mother is still happy with her work, she’d miss her students. And I couldn’t do without her. We did that already for a couple decades trying to make my career work. It was damned hard and I don’t have any interest in picking it back up if I don't have to. A weekend or two apart is good for anyone but…”

Kaidan’s not sure why his dad stops. His sharp eyes catch something, maybe the way his son’s suddenly braced himself for a blow. Kaidan shakes it off, drags his suddenly leaden arm up and hugs Elek’s shoulder. He tries to smile and it comes off a little sideways.

“The last time I saw her, she threw me off the ship. She could do without me.”

“Her ordering you off a dying ship doesn’t exactly make her look bad to me, Kai.” Elek speaks gently but then grunts, “Okay, enough math. C’mon, let’s walk up the hill.” He waits for Kaidan to push up and reaches out a hand for a pull up, a sparkle in his eye. 

Kaidan reaches back, another smile trying to come on. “Can’t win these days, Dad. I’ve got extra leverage.” 

Elek grins at him, tugging back just enough to make Kaidan have to brace before he lets himself be pulled up. “I don’t know, I might still take you by surprise.”

They head up in fading light, between the naked spreading rows of old trees. New grass is still a month or so off and the stubble from the late summer hay cut is soft under their feet, the snow melt soaked soil barely dents under their boots. His father’s shoulders relax as they hike, as he points out the new planting across the meadow, the way they’d espaliered a set of yellow apples up a new wall last spring. Kaidan sucks in a breath of cool, damp air scented with woodsmoke, trying to relax, too. Elek’s long loping stride is easier to keep up with now, after the last six months of near daily missions. 

Or maybe he’s just taller. 

As they mount the hill near the road, Ivor calls them over to a leaning pile of wood and tin that used to be an old outbuilding that collapsed as the snow melted last night. It’s leaning precariously over the road that winds up to his cousin’s winery in the southern sloping hills. A collapse will mean damage to a road frequently traveled in the spring. 

Kaidan walks around it a few times, listening to Ivor point out weak points. “Yeah, I can get this out that way. Not sure how much of the material’s going to be reusable when I’m done.” He shakes his head, shrugs.

“If you think it’ll wait til tomorrow, we’ll come back and see. I should get home, Ella will be expecting me by dark.” They say their goodbyes. 

On the walk back down, Kaidan’s feet are dragging. Elek’s humming an old song under his breath, before noticing that Yuna has called. The cabin is cedar scented and laid out exactly how Kaidan remembers. Even the old cushions on the couch have the same thick, green canvas covers. Dad waves him to the bathroom for first dibs, smiling into his old style comm phone as it dials.

The water in the old shower smells of rust and dark earth, the well here is still deep and cold and he rushes rather than let it warm up, keeping it for his father.

Kaidan should be...he _is_ exhausted. Passing the living room where his father is listening to his mother tell him about her day as he peruses the bookshelf under the window.. He just stops himself from toppling face down in the bunk, old ropes creaking beneath him in protest, anyway.

Minutes tick on the ancient clock in the hall. An hour; the shower cutting on and off and his father’s warm tenor through the woodframed wall. 

And then, quiet. 

Just the clock. Ticking.

A heavy weight of silence where engines should be, where the night shift should be passing by. Where the Normandy should be humming beneath him. He shifts his shoulders against the thick foam of the mattress, flips the blanket to the smoother side of the flannel, fidgets with his pillow.

Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his hand, Kaidan sighs before he gives up and triggers his omni. There are messages flashing, scrolling past a dozen, names he recognizes, some he doesn’t. Condolences, sorry, can i, call if. He flicks it away, calls up his music app, instead. Maybe if he has something to listen to besides his own damned heart beating. 

The lilt of violins rises, the last thing he’d listened to. It’s been over a month, now. He drops his head and fumbles to shut it off but he’s already remembering.

Shuffling feet to a lilting song, sand on the dancefloor beneath them. Surefooted on any battlefield, but not quite sure how to step there and she’d so carefully followed his lead. A minute, two. A frustrated twist of a smile when she stumbled and a sly glance up through her lashes before she’d levered herself up to kiss his throat. He’d laughed and steered her past the other dancers, sure he’d have time to teach her a step or two later, they only had one more night.

She’s never going to learn to waltz with him now. _Aedan_. 

He’s out of bed, shoving his bare feet into his boots and grabbing a canvas coat from the rack beside the door, a couple of bottles from the cooler the crew had left on the porch. The air is mild for February, the breeze has picked up again but instead of coming from down the valley it’s from the east. A tang of salt they almost never get this far inland. He turns his face into it, cool and just a little bite. It flits into his hair, ruffling the staticky mess. 

The ancient walnut tree to the north of the barn is still standing. From below, Kaidan can see the platform he’d built there the summer before BAaT, crossbeams still clinging to the support struts. He leans the ladder he’d drug out from the barn against the trunk. 

Eyeing it from below, he’s not sure he wants to test his nearly twenty year old construction. He can see moonlight through the splits.

 _God hates a coward, LT._

Lieutenant Commander, he tells the Ashley in his head. He sends a careful wave across the platform. It shudders but holds. He sways halfway up the ladder, but he holds on, too.

The planks are warped and cupped in a few places but they feel fairly stable. He’s only a couple of meters up anyway. He’s survived worse.

The storm was enough to sweep the mat of old leaves and hulls mostly away, it’s only a little damp when he slowly kneels down and sits, scootching back to the tree with his heels.

He’d camped up here for a month after BAaT, before he split for Montreal. He can still see the holes he’d drilled to run his tent ropes through. Now, they let water through and it’s probably what saved it.

Leaning back against the trunk, Kaidan knocks open the beer against the edge of the platform and sips. It’s solid against his back and the acrid scent of walnut hulls he’d crushed scrabbling up is more comforting than the applewood smoke drifting up from the buildings.

She’d listen to him talk about home and shake her head. _Doesn’t even sound like we grew up on the same planet, sometimes._

Maybe they hadn’t.

He’d intended to bring her, their next leave and show her….all of this. The tent platform. The path up between the old bent apple trees that had those odd pale green flowers. The course he’d made, up on a flat bit trying to relearn control. The grey purple mountains climbing up to the north. The rolling fields of vines and fruit. 

God, he’d wanted to be cold; February in the valley. The warmth feels wrong, dangerous. If it lasts too long the trees will bud out only to be blasted and wither in the March frost. It’ll wreck the whole year’s growth Maybe next year, too.

His hand reaches out to brace himself against the wave of pain streaking across him. The walnut bark is smooth and broadly flaked up here, and he digs his fingers into a crack, grounding himself, his other hand shuddering around the neck of the beer. The hair on his arms has gone staticky. 

He’s going to have to climb down, there’s no way it’ll hold if he lets go. 

Should have tried to pull the wrecked building down, worn himself out some more, he tells himself. If he’d been there, if he’d just followed her, he could have wrapped her in stasis. She’d have survived that.

His fingers trace into a regularly shaped curve and the small textile shock jars him out of the spiral. He rolls his head to the side to see… the right side of a carved heart, the chevron of a cartoonish arrow fletching.

The moonlight is strong now that the storms have pulled through and the carving is old but he can see initials, a lighter brown against the greybrown bark. E A + Y T

Elek Alenko and Yuna Tam. They’ll last as long as this old tree. They’d last forever. 

Aedan and he aren’t going to get that.

The beer bottle shatters before it hits the side of the barn, amber shards in a halo of electric blue.


	3. up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> inertia is a drag

_Wide grey eyes behind the transparent faceplate.  
Scared, she’d been scared. He could reach her…_

His bed in Vancouver is soaked with sweat as he wakes up in a panic, hand stretched out in mid mnemonic, sheets twisted around his legs. Kaidan has to take a few deep breaths to dissipate the corona that had flared up. He’d been dreaming of...he presses the heel of his palm against his mouth, letting the pressure center him. He can’t remember. 

Her again, probably. He yanks the sheet loose, in frustration. He’s stuck. Still there, every morning, every time he closes his eyes. Stripping the bed, he gathers the damp sheets in a heap to carry down to the laundry.

Yuna’s watching with the sound low so he doesn’t realize what he’s seeing as he leaves the kitchen until he focuses on the screen; Dr. Chakwas, her smooth grey bob curving under her ears. The doctor has her chin lifted but her eyes are red and tired and she looks old as she makes her report. How Kaidan had taken command as soon as it was apparent he was senior, calling the lifepods, keeping people busy to keep them calm. His coolness under pressure as he helped her triage the casualties, once the salvage ship had happened upon them. 

The salvagers had given up on profit when they realized there were still people to recover. They’d even sent a probe down, to look for the pods that crashed. It occurs to him, he doesn’t know if the Alliance had compensated them. Or if they’d gone back, once the Alliance had called off their search for Shepard. God, he can’t remember the name of the ship, just a garish red and purple paint job geared for alien eyes. 

The camera shifts to Adams as he stands at attention, explaining how Kaidan had cleared the debris from the emergency shaft with a carefully aimed pull. They’d still lost people, the elevator had jammed or vented, but no one from Engineering would have made it without him clearing the shaft. 

Kaidan can remember ordering Emerson to Engineering via the elevator, as he’d taken the emergency shaft up to Crew. 

Emerson either died in there in the elevator or when the emergency pods on that deck had been wiped out in the first hit, Adams hadn’t seen. He _had_ seen Shepard, through the small port of his portside pod. He’d been the last to see her, oxygen venting into space as inertia flung her into the gravity well. Kaidan can remember how the normally even keeled engineer’s voice had broken when he reported, made it official. 

He can remember wanting to throw Adams into the wall, out an airlock anything to make him stop. But Adams keeps talking about how Kaidan had been so careful with his crew, a steady hand in a storm as the salvage crew gathered in the drifting pods. 

Anderson, next reading her words from her recommendation. Bravery under fire. His ability to think on his feet. His conscientious duty to his crew. His refusal to allow biased perceptions to warp his knowledge of his worth. He’ll be a fine asset to Alliance Command if they recognize that worth. 

It’s report speak. 

Kaidan can almost see her, sitting in the mess, foot tapping the base of the table while she typed, simultaneously narrating her real thoughts as she translated them into HQ doggerel. But the Captain continues and his heart lurches sideways. “Shepard always saw what people could be, she saw the best in us. And in Lieutenant Commander Alenko, she saw unlimited potential. I’d like to quote from her last report.”

_'' Lieutenant Alenko is the finest Marine I’ve had a chance to serve with. He has an unparalleled gift for finding the humanity in all of us, sinners and saints. He was gifted with a weapon at birth but unlike many, he didn’t find his only worth in that weapon. For him, the only value in that or any weapon was the chance to protect what he loved with it. It is my opinion that he should be given every chance to do so.”_

The orange he’d nabbed from the fruit bowl drops from his nerveless fingers.

“So it is with her express wishes and the Alliance Navy’s whole hearted agreement, that we promote you to …”

“Mom,” he strangles out.

Yuna’s head snaps over her shoulder, with a startled gasp. “Oh. Oh, darling, I’m sorry I didn’t hear you.” She shuts it down, Anderson walking forward with his insignia to pin on a stoic Kaidan, in mid salute.

“No, no it’s fine. I ..God, Mom, where…this is all classified.” He lands on that. “ You’re really not supposed to have this.”

She waves him off. “I recorded it. I learned how to do it quietly years ago. What are they going to do, arrest me for wanting to hear good things about my son?”

“You’ve got to delete it, okay? Now that you’ve watched.” 

“Who am I going to show,” she scoffs mildly, “The mahjong lunch group? My universal origin theory class?” She sniffs, but there’s a softness in her voice when she adds, “ Kaidan, there’s no harm in hearing how highly she - _they_ think of you. It’s a comfort.”

“Please, Mom.”

She looks at him with raised eyebrows for a moment and then bows her head, conceding. “If you insist.” She fiddles with her omni and then waved her hands like she’d just done a magic trick. “It’s gone.” 

It’s archived, but he’ll take it. She’d always had a thing for scrapbooking his achievements. There was probably a copy of the after action report from BAaT somewhere on her device. At least she hadn’t stuck it to the fridge. 

Yuna stands from her perch on the sofa, brushing his arm as she passes. “Come and sit with me.” 

Kaidan retrieves his lost orange from where it rolled across the floor by the sofa and follows her to the kitchen.

She pours them both a cup of tea, water steaming as it pours from the spout of the black teakettle. 

He watches the leaves bloom in the delicate cup bracing for the question he can feel coming.

It’s less of a question when it comes, more of a prompt as if she’s leading her class through storytelling. “Tell me how she took her coffee, darling.”

“Depended. Usually just black, whatever was in the carafe. But she liked it with...ah, cream and chocolate, sometimes.” He’d just about learned how she mixed it, just the right measures, making it in the little kitchenette of the cabana on the Sun Coast. He tears into the orange peel with his thumbnail. Sharp bite of citrus clears the memory.

“A treat?” He nods and there’s a faint smile on his mother’s lips. “She wasn’t indulgent, usually?”

“Not really. It helped her relax, I think. She didn’t much but that helped.”

“Did she play poker with you?” Yuna had taught him how to play, sitting in waiting rooms for doctors to tell him he was a miracle every time he broke something but still came back negative for cancer. 

“Once in a while. Uh. She..didn’t like to play for money, didn’t like the idea of using what she knew against the crew, how to read them. But she’d play if we just used chips. Creamed us. Mom…” He can hear the exasperation in his voice and stops. She’s trying to help.

“You have to be able to talk about her, when you go back. There will be questions, even from the well meaning. And you know as well as I, they won’t all be.” 

“If I go back I will. But she was...it feels not quite right. She was so...guarded with anyone who wasn’t her...friend. I can...I can talk about Commander Shepard. Talking about Aedan is. It feels like I’m betraying the trust she put in me.” He grimaces. “I don’t know. It’s pointless now, I guess. She doesn’t need me to protect her.”

Yuna sipped her tea, considering. “You know, it’s rather impressive that she was able to make that sort of connection. My child development classes are far behind me, but a child growing up in such circumstances...they often have difficulties, later. Making friends, trusting.” Yuna tsk’d, “She must have been very strong, darling.”

“Yeah.” He blinked, worrying at the orange peel in his hands. Something about that clicks with him. Something she’d said. Never gotten past the physical, never been the sort you brought home to the folks. 

She’d always hesitated, right before she’d kissed him. There had always been...something she was fighting just before. Maybe she’d been afraid?

Of the warmth lasting too long, only to wither in another late frost. 

“Kaidan, I’m sorry. I pushed too hard.” His mother’s dark worried eyes are scanning his face, her hand’s on his, rounded fingertips gently scratching. 

“No. No, Mom. I was just thinking...she mentioned, once. That she’d never had anything like the Normandy before. Her career skipped her around a lot. She was usually the scout before a bigger unit was sent in.”

“Ah.” Yuna is hearing something in that, but he’s not sure what. His curiosity must show. “That would explain why there weren’t more to mourn her.”

“Not everyone could make it, I guess. And...no you’re right. There weren’t many.” Maybe if he’d...what? Played social secretary? “Not enough.”

She sets her tea down. “I got a message this morning from your friend from the Academy.”

“From Nera?” They’d been supposed to meet up for lunch, next time he docked at the Citadel. Catch up. 

“She wanted to know if we had heard from you. She thought I might be able to ask you to call her. So.” Yuna taps his arm and drops a kiss against his hairline. “Call your friends, darling. I should get to work.”

After her office door closes, he opens his omni to check his mail. There’s a dozen pings marked urgent and more messages. 

He flicks the first one from his buddy from Basic. Chet had left him a couple of recordings, easy to send out in packets whenever the comm buoys aligned. Kaidan can hear the engines whining in the background of the carrier Chet’s stationed on out in the deep. _“Alenko? Babe, I just heard about the Normandy. You ok?! Call me, man. Let me know.”_ Another, this one from the Mess Hall, the clatter of starving pilots filling the pauses in the feed, his voice low and rough. _“Kaidan, babe, you gotta call me back. I saw the footage of the memorial. You...I...just call me, okay. Or call Acharya? She’s fretting.”_

He swipes over to hers. _Kaidan, I’m so sorry. The whole fleet is in shock. I’m here if you need to talk._ Nera Acharya, his roommate from Arcturus, had sent a brief note and then a vid. _“The promotion list just came out. Lieutenant Commander, wow. That’s great but you look like you need to... Look, I’m Earthside in a month if you need anything. Call me. Or Chet or anybody”_ Her large brown eyes are worried and he feels a twinge. A month from three weeks ago. It’d be nice to see her.

Even his CO from his last cruise on the Tokyo, Captain Helcik, had reached out. _Just checking in, Alenko. We’re real proud of your promotion, out here. Let us hear from you, I’ll be keeping an eye out if they want to send you back my way, I sure could use your touch with these new recruits they keep sending me._

There are six messages from Liara. _Call me. I have an idea. Call me. I'm sure we can find her. Call me they gave up too soon. Call me I’m going to Illium I think I’ve heard…_ He can hear her fixation on Shepard in her soft, intense voice. 

It had unnerved Aedan, as much as she’d liked the asari. _“Having someone in my head like that? it's...too much. Too crowded with just me, most the time.”_ He deletes them and blocks the address. He regrets it almost as soon as he takes his next breath.

Tali. If he closes his eyes, he can see her as Adams hands her limp figure up to him. A rip in her suit, a dose of antibiotic, she’d been ok. Her slumped posture and the rich voice drip sorrow. _“Kaidan , I hope this reaches you. I made it back to the Fleet. Shepard said that if she was ever out of communication I should...you would want to know that I was okay. I am in quarantine, waiting for the captain of the Reyya to approve my findings. I saw the vid, the memorial. Shepard would want us to check on you, I think. I wish I had been able to come, I’m so sorry, Kaidan.”_

Garrus’s messages are short and angry. _What happened? No one’s telling anyone anything._ Then: _Kaidan, I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting. Should have been, seems like it was bad. Can’t believe she’s gone. I...Let me know if I can help._

Next message is longer. _Kaidan, being on the Citadel is more frustrating than it was before, seems like we’re doing the council’s dirty work, covering up. I’m sure there are CSEC officers planting evidence of the Geth where there wasn’t. Everyone’s telling lies. Guess I’m just used to Shepard getting things done, no matter what. I don’t think CSEC is a place where I can do that. May be time for me to move on._

The last new message is from Anderson, a week ago. It’s short and to the point. _Meet me on Arcturus. I’ll ping you when you dock._

He clears them, one by one. He pings Chet and Nera back, and Tali, too. Just to let them know. Makes an attempt to respond to Captain Helcik, tells him thanks for the offer, he’s waiting for orders.

It takes almost an hour to wade through the dozens of requests for interviews, reminders about equipment to update, programmed responses.

And then there’s just one little blink of a message.

Aedan. She’d left him a voice message to let him know she was on her way to meet them at the Citadel after her debrief on Arcturus. He’d kept it, the only personal message she’d ever sent him. 

Ever would. 

His hand hovers over it. He almost swats it open. 

If he closes his eyes, he can pretend for just a moment that she’s still on that shuttle headed home.

 _“Hey. They’re done with me, finally. Routine debrief but it’s such a circus. Bow and curtsy to all the brass, pirouette for the ministers. They’re all in fucking denial.”_ She’d sounded exhausted as if she’d spent the day fighting those jumpy sniper geth Tali had labeled ghosts and the slow drawl that rarely peeked through was starting to thicken. _“I’m headed to meet y’all at the Citadel. Tell Joker to keep her engines hot, I want to get back out there. Better than bureaucrats, any day of the week.”_ She cracks a yawn and his shoulders tighten against a ripple of dark energy, knowing what comes next. _“I’m gonna try and sleep it off. Sure have missed you, sweetheart. Sure do l...”_ The low, intimate purr drops off and she gets a little crisper, catching herself. _“See you in a few hours.”_

He can’t make himself delete it. 

He slips his feet into the new running shoes he’d picked up a couple days before and runs away, instead.

Night falls before he drags himself back up the stairs. 

When he makes himself get out of the shower, there’s a package next to a tray with a mounded plate of pasta and chicken.

Still wrapped in Systems Alliance blue tape, the package has been sitting next to the fireplace like a ticking bomb. Seems like Elek’s got a point to make.

Kaidan drops down on the mattress next to it, rubbing his hair dry. Listening to the muffled plink of a recorded piano from his mother’s office for a few songs before sliding his thumb across the seal.

A thin, biolocked pad flashing a datestamp for tomorrow and a softer plas wrapped square underneath.

Some things never change and HQ’s insistence that a new set of BDU’s will be the saving of them all is one of them.

He remembers Shepard smirking at the new options when the brass had announced they were giving up the old camo. “They’re gonna pick this one.” She’d pointed at the version with the white undershirt and accents, leaning over his shoulder as he and Ashley debated. “All that white, it’ll be a bitch to keep clean on the ground and they’ll be able to pinch us for new sets every third month.”

He flips open the flap on the plastic wrapper and tugs out a corner.

It’s the ones with all the white. 

He coughs a laugh and rubs a hand over his face, slowing down as he gets to the rough hair on his chin. He’d been a day away from a full beard a week ago. He’s probably full on mountain man, now.

He slaps his hand against the datapad, allowing it to scan his print.

Reassignment to HQ effective- _hunh_ \- in a week. Report to flight to Arcturus from the spaceport in two days. 

_HQ_. Kaidan stares blankly at the pad. Are they going to make him a desk jockey? They’d lost a lot of ships at the Citadel. Maybe there aren’t any postings, yet. But with his rating...

Ashley reminiscing about receiving commendations one day and reassignment to yet another outlying dirtside post the next echoes in his memory. Shepard and her determination to get Ash to a proper place. _They shouldn’t have given me crew if they didn’t want me sticking my nose into this kinda thing._

His last conversation with Shepard, _they’re trying to bury this and you with it,_ he’d told her. 

Her response, fierce and intent. _They're going to pass you over._

Wide grey eyes in a blur behind her faceplate

Trying to...tell him _what? Do_ what?

But he had his Lieutenant Commander stripes now, they _hadn’t_ buried him, they wouldn’t promote him and then leave him to straggle on. Would they? 

So what did they want with him? It occurs to him to wonder, what had happened to everyone else? 

So few had been at the funeral. Mom was right, it seemed _odd_ now. They had all...been proud of her, supported her. Loved her, even if only as their Commander. She’d been _theirs._ Adams and Chakwas had been there for his ceremony but not hours later for the memorial. Why?

If he wants to know...Kaidan types in his ID number and, taking a breath, acknowledges receipt of his orders. Pulls up the Normandy’s surviving roster, waits for his clearance check. 

The result leaves his lungs empty, like he’d been kicked in the chest. There had been _more._ He was sure of it. He clicks the first name for details.

Adams is already in the drydock, heading a refit of the flagship after the Citadel. Chakwas is...on Mars? That doesn’t seem right. He frowns at the pad. Chakwas loved being in space as much as any of them. He pauses a moment before the next name, the last of her officers besides him. The reason she was…ignoring the burst of static in his memory, Kaidan clenches his hand and then flicks the tab. _Moreau._

Joker’s still on medical leave, in the light grav of the military hospital at Arcturus. _Reassignment pending medical evaluation._

His frown gets deeper as he scrolls down the enlisted.

Two on medical leave, five more on medical pending _discharge._ Four have submitted flat resignations. Another is requesting transfer dirtside. 

Normandy had berthed a fifty member crew and maybe ten are still in space. After the fleet losses at the Citadel, that borders on catastrophic loss. 

Kaidan drops the pad to his side, flailing mentally. 

What can he do?

Go recruiting? Type up a mass mailing, get the gang back together, storm HQ, barge into the Fleet offices and insist...what? That they be assigned a new ship?

Shepard, herself, couldn’t have held them together, at this point.

She hadn’t even tried.

 _“It’s not just you.”_ She’d recommended more than him for promotion. Maybe that had been the plan? Instead of a tight little pack of successful mutineers, a spread out network of people who knew the truth. Officers and enlisted, so that when the Reapers came back, there were people in place. 

But she hadn’t mentioned a plan to him. Maybe there hadn’t been time.

Normandy had felt like family, to him, forged in the way only a solitary fight like theirs could. Aedan had struggled with it, outside of her squadmates. The ships she’d been on had never been more than temporary but she’d started to make headway, make it hers once Anderson had stepped aside.

But were they or just a tight little system, rotating around her singularity? Doomed to fall into her. Without her, they were rogues. All going to spin off in dangerous directions, smashing into things unless the Alliance put them to better use.

He can always quit. “But they’re still out there, aren't they?” He stares out of the window, seeing less of the city lights reflecting off the dark mirror of the Bay and more of the vast darkness beyond the edge of the system. Where the future might be lurking, waiting. 

What the hell else is he going to do, hide in the orchard until the end? Waste all his training and...what? Dad didn’t need his help. Besides, he’s already reinvented his life a couple of times. He doesn’t want to do it again. 

Kaidan shifts his shoulders, trying to ease the tightness that keeps building up. The ache of being deep in the gravity well of Earth, the unnerving...stillness of being planet side for weeks is starting to wear on him. The night sky isn’t as clean here as it is farther into the interior. Even with attention to light pollution, the stars are muted over the Bay. He can’t see anything. Saturn and Jupiter trailing a rising Mars. The tail of Scorpius farther west. It’s all dimmer than what he can see against his closed eyelids, what he’d spent 10 years streaking past, making a part of him. 

He feels the loss, gravity pinning his feet too heavy on the ground as much as grief dragging him down.

She was a moment, a tiny pivot point. It’s only been months since he met her. 

He can’t throw what he built away because she’s gone. 

She didn’t want him to throw it away when she was here. Maybe that had been what she was trying to tell him, with that last look.

Her last order was for the crew. That look had been for him. He knows it. He just doesn’t know what she was trying to say. 

“You make up your mind, Kai?” 

He glances up at his dad, hovering in the doorway. 

“Yeah, Dad. Hey, if you’ll give me a minute can you and Mom…” He stops. It’s all classified, he’s breaking a hundred regs. But…”I need to talk to you.”

Elek’s eyes narrow and search his face before he nods. “We’ll be downstairs.”

His mother has tucked her feet up on the sofa and they’re leaning together, murmuring when he comes down. His mother’s dark head on his dad’s shoulder. Elek’s holding her hand and they look up and smile at him as he steps down onto the landing. They’ve built a fire, crackling and warm. Everything about this room, his home, is safe and warm.

And so damned fragile.

His dad has left the green leather chair for him, but he can’t sit. 

Walking past them, Kaidan stares out at the water, still darkly reflecting the life of the city around it. He can see the lights of the Systems Alliance Admiralty Hall shining like a beacon across the Bay. 

“Darling.”

Sucking in a breath, he turns back to them. “I’m going back. I have to. But you need to know a few things before...I don’t know when I’ll get home, again.” He takes another breath and begins, “We were supposed to pick up an artifact on Eden Prime, a prothean gadget the archaeologists had dug up. When we got there, Saren was there with the Geth. That’s in all the news reports, right?”

Elek nods, waiting to see where this is going.

“There was a ship there, too. Huge, pitch black, surrounded by red energy.” 

“Saren’s dreadnought.” He’d figured Dad was still getting briefings.

“Yeah. Except we _talked_ to it, it told us it’s name. Sovereign. While we were down there, I triggered the beacon. It lit up- started to emit some kind of field. Shepard knocked me out of it, but she got caught and it ...basically downloaded itself into her mind. It showed her a vision, a history. The ship was part of a vast fleet of machines, sentient machines and they’d wiped out the protheans 50,000 years ago. And before that, another civilization. And back for millions of years. Cycles.”

Kaidan goes through the whole of the mission, everything he can think of. When he gets to Feros and the ancient plant that could control minds, Yuna stands up suddenly, waving at him to continue as she walks over to the fridge. He continues on over the clink of glass, outlining the Cipher and how it had clarified things as she pulls bottles out.

She hands his dad and him a beer and takes a sip of her own as she sits back down.

When he finishes, Elek’s the one staring past him out at the Bay, drinking off the last of the bottle. The fire crackles merrily for a few minutes. “And they’re on their way back?”

“Yeah. One ship took out a third of the Fifth, Dad. Dozens of Council ships. Shepard saw _thousands_ of Reapers in her vision.” 

Yuna has shredded the label on the beer into neat strips. “And these….these _husks_ , you’re sure they were...human?”

“We saw the process on Eden Prime. We saw it happen.” 

“And the Council...the Systems Alliance are doing…?”

“I don’t know, Dad. That’s why I’m going back. I can’t... I’m not Shepard, I don’t have the vision. But I can’t let this get buried and I can’t run away from it. We don’t know if what we did changed enough to stop it all together, delay it for years, or centuries. Shepard was.” He has to stop and take a drink. “She was trying to figure out our next move, when the Normandy was destroyed. We don’t have any idea what the ship was. It might have been another...I didn’t see it. No one who lived did, except maybe our pilot and he’s still in medical. I don’t even know if they’ve been able to debrief him yet. My orders are to go to Arcturus in a week. I’m gonna try and see him. See if...there’s anything he can tell me.” 

“Meanwhile...you. You can’t tell anyone.” Yuna starts to interrupt him and he cuts her off. “Mom, you can’t.”

Elek squeezes her shoulders. “He’s right. Anyone who didn’t know Kaidan, who hadn’t ... would think we were crazy. If the powers that be are serious about keeping a lid on it…” He shrugs. “I can think of a dozen ways they can make us miserable, Yuna.”

“We have to do something. We can’t just…” Yuna clacked her beer onto the coffee table. “We have to prepare the orchard. They’ll start with population centers, if they come. Always, when there are massacres, they start in cities. The orchard will be.” She sits up straighter. “It will be safer.”

“Yeah, probably. I don’t know how much warning you’re gonna get.” Kaidan cautioned. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t just go and not tell you. Not with...” He waved his hand at the skyline behind them. “This isn’t going to be safe, once it starts. If they get to Earth. The things Shepard described…” He rubs his hands over his face again. “I gotta go shave.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be another chapter and an epilogue.


	4. over the top at dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> back in the warm embrace of the Systems Alliance Navy

Luna’s docks are crowded and the low buzz of noise is heavy after two weeks in the quiet lull of his parent’s home, the soft stillness of the orchard. He has to catch himself from hunching his shoulders, rolling them to shake out the clenched tension. He’d just managed to shake the tremor that had started as the shuttle caught weightlessness, as the sky outside the bulkhead port had turned black and star studded.

He takes a deep breath, coughing at the sudden intake of new dye from his jacket. No choice, though. On Arcturus, dress blues and full insignia are expected. He glances through the thick viewing port and misses his armor. 

_“Can you fill these boots, soldier?”_

His stomach flipped. What the hell?

He spun on his heel towards...it’s not quite her voice. _Who…_ .A cylindrical holographic kiosk in the middle of the ‘port walkway. _“Can you fill these boots, soldier?”_

There’s a group of not quite kids, older teenagers in front, taking turns to jump forward; triggering the advertisement. _“I grew up on Earth. I stood at Elysium. At the Citadel. Who’s next? Do you measure up? Are you ready for the greatest challenge you’ll ever face? Talk to a recruitment officer today!”_

It _isn’t_ her voice, it’s perky in a way she only ever faked, pitched a little too high. Her camera ready smile flashes on the screen but It’s not her low, rich voice. This is...filtered. She hadn’t made it. It was a piece job, made up of scraps of vid and vocal modulation. A holographic image of a pair of shined up boots flashes next. _“Can you fill these boots, soldier?”_ And then an action shot of her running. 

Kaidan can feel his chest seize, his stomach clench and then flip, acid at the back of his throat. He can’t... can’t make himself walk past it. He _can’t..._

He feels a presence over his shoulder and a soft, accented voice. “Lieutenant Commander, excuse me. Lieutenant Commander Alenko?” 

He turned his head to meet a solid chest in Alliance dress blues, a set of Lieutenant Commander stripes on the shoulder. He looked up into a square, tanned face with a sympathetic expression in the green eyes and a not quite regulation flop of light blonde hair over the high forehead. 

“Forgive me, can I be of assistance?” The soldier looks over his head to the kiosk and grimaces, “I found it startling too, when I first saw it. Do you need to sit down?” 

“No. I,” He clenches his teeth and manages to grit out, “I’ve got to catch a ride to Arcturus.” 

“Ah. Come with me. I have a way past that monstrosity.” 

The officer put their bulk between Kaidan and the display and pointed to the left, towards a smaller, less populated hallway. He takes a breath and lets them steer him that way, concentrating on his breathing, flexing his fingers to push down the urge to pull up a barrier; the corona that would only be a complication, here.

A few steps down the hall, the officer waves their hand over the bioreader at a door, opening into a larger office space. An enlisted staff member looks up sharply from their work and after standing to salute, relaxes at the sight of the officer, who offers, “The lieutenant commander was on a late shuttle. Just taking him through to catch his cruiser, Sahni” 

“Oh, sure, Lieutenant Commander Lundqvist. Sir.” The corporal nodded to Kaidan and waved them through. He was led into another hallway that he could see opened up to the larger fareway. 

The boarding kiosks were just beyond, people seated waiting to board and the usual sounds of the spaceport filling the air. 

“Uh. Thank you. Lundqvist?”

“Ah, yah. Thought you might not recognize me.” There was another sympathetic grimace. “Gerte Lundqvist. I, ah, met you at the memorial.”

“You were. You had an asari with you, you brought chocolate.” He cast around for a minute, “You’re Shepard’s friend, from Arcturus.”

The grin was broader and their hands spread in an expansive “there you are” gesture. “Yes. Aedan was my roommate at Arcturus.”

“I’m sorry, I guess I didn’t realize you were stationed on Luna.” 

“Temporarily, waiting for a reposting after my ship was damaged at the Citadel. Thank my stars, since I’d have never been able to make it Earthside otherwise with such short notice.” Lundqvist looked as if they might be about to ask why it had been done that way and then shook their head. “Forgive me, Aedan would tell you I was always forward. Are you all right, Alenko?”

“I’m...better. Thank you. I don’t know why the ad was such a shock. I guess I should’ve realized they’d...” he raised a hand, in exasperation.

“ _Hmph_. Coming upon such a thing? My heart nearly stopped when I got back from Earth. When I recognized you, I realized it had done you a turn.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his hand across the back of his skull. “I really appreciate your help. Can I...I honestly do need to catch the cruiser, but I feel like I owe you lunch...or, or a drink?” 

Lundqvist shook their head with a wistful smile, “I wish I could. I have a meeting with an admiral at twenty past.” 

And his ship was going to board in thirty. 

He waved it off, “No, no problem. Please, call me Kaidan. Any friend of Shepard’s...”

“And I am Gerte. Please, if you are back this way, look me up and I will have that drink with you, introduce you to Ianya, my partner. Aedan spoke of you to me, the last message I had from her, well. Before. I would like to...it would be my pleasure.” 

“I’ve got orders to Arcturus, not really sure what the assignment is. If you find yourself that way when they get you a posting?”

Gerte’s smile is huge and their hand is warm and encompassing when they accept his handshake. “Absolutely. Stars go with you, Kaidan.”

He’s aboard the Kanara and on his way to the Charon relay in a half hour with a cup of tea from a sympathetic flight attendant. He debates taking a dose of the painkillers he keeps on him but the tea helps, some. Enough. He closes his eyes and tries not to dream.

A few hours of ship maneuvers and 36 light years away, they dock at Arcturus Station. By the time they’re locked in, he’s sent off the messages he’d been sitting on, to Acharya and Chet, to Tali. Garrus. One to his folks. Thanking them. 

As Kaidan takes a left past the customs desk towards the military wing of the station, Hackett’s flagship is visible through the viewing window of the portside dock. True to the man’s word, an indicator pops up against his wrist, a message on his omni from Anderson to meet him in the officer’s mess.

He’s got another stop, first. His feet don’t drag as he walks but they feel like he’s forgotten to turn his mag boots off.

The crowd thins as he walks down to the hospital wing, the mix of clothing changing from suits and dress blues, cadets in caps, to the scrubs of nurses, the occasional counselor, a visiting off-duty soldier. There’s the odd rush of air current as he steps from the working section to the gentler grav of the hospital. It tugs at Kaidan’s uniform, still a little too loose on his frame. 

He’s back on biotic ration though and the program will remind him if he needs to top off. Is reminding him, he catches the nag light pop up against his wrist. 

Not quite as pointed as Dad setting an extra bowl of salmon stew in front of him with a lifted eyebrow, and not nearly as tasty. Part of the job.

Doctor Chakwas had updated him, she’d checked in on Jeff using her status as his former ship's doctor to break through the red tape. He’d been in an induced coma for two weeks and limited access after. It sounded grim, but considering the shape he’d been in when they pulled him out of the pod? Joker was probably lucky to be alive.

Luck in Shepard's shape.

The nurse tells him that Flight Lieutenant Moreau is able to see visitors but that he has asked to not be disturbed. Kaidan asks to have him told and waits, trying not to fidget, to rub his head. The smells here are...he'd considered medicine, once. but he could never do this day to day. 

There’s a coffee bar by the nurse’s station. He closes his eyes a moment, breathing shallowly. The brew is acrid and over cooked and nothing like what Aedan kept brewing on the Normandy. The only piece of equipment she’d ever added to the inventory besides gear was the fancy vacuum carafe guaranteed to keep their hot coffee fresh.

“Lieutenant Commander?” A crisply turned out nurse waves him towards the room across the corridor. “Only a few minutes, sir. He has PT in twenty.”

Kaidan’s mouth dries out suddenly and he glances towards the burned coffee carafe. A shudder runs through him as he swallows. “Thanks.”

The hospital wing cheerily overlooks the central hydroponic/air processing garden and the two bed room is bright from the broad spectrum lighting shining through the window. In a wheelchair in dark silhouette against it, Joker hunches in on himself. 

“Hey.” Kaidan tries to sound cheerful, it fails miserably.

“Hey,” Joker half grunts. Pale, with the vague look of meds in his eyes, Joker’s still in soft casts on his arms and two webbing like braces on both legs. “Sorry, I didn't make it to the memorial, I was tied up.” 

“I heard. How you doing, now?”

“Oh, great. I’m terrific, wanna sign my cast? Gonna run a marathon in the morning.” He runs out of the air to be sarcastic and takes a shallow breath before he thinly adds, “They’re telling me I might not clear to fly again.” 

Kaidan has to bite down on his tongue to resist the _good_ that springs up, out of nowhere. He grabs the doorway, a wave of grief hitting him, the memory of Joker over their shared channel, screaming her name until the acceleration of the pod had flung his unsecured body against the side, damaging the helmet, knocking him out. “I’m..sorry.” It doesn’t sound sincere but...it cuts through the imagined static.

“But you got promoted, so you know, good for you. Guess they’ve gotta fill all those empty boots with something, even if it’s a stuffed shirt.”

The acid in the husky shell of a voice slaps Kaidan in the face. “Why the fuck are _you_ pissed at _me_? If you’d just…” He bites it off. He _couldn’t_ leave. Kaidan knows it. He closes his eyes and hers flash in his memory again. “You shouldn’t have argued with her. It would have.. She’d have had time.” 

And if he’d gone too, he could have...what? Died, too? Saved her? 

“I know that. I know it. Why the hell did you tell her to come after me?”

“I _didn’t_.”

“You told her I was there, asshole. You think she wasn’t gonna come after me?”

“I was going to...she ordered me off the ship I wanted to... do you think I didn’t?”

“I wish to fuck you had. I wish it was...” Joker drops his head to his chest, stopping.

Kaidan finishes for him. “Yeah? Well, so do I.” He shakes his head, trying to clear the haze of anger, agony that’s flared through him and the last sight of those big grey eyes, trying to tell him something. He can't talk to Joker, not like this. “I...I’ve got to go. Anderson’s waiting to…” 

“Good for you, close the door behind you.” 

“You don’t have to stand up.” He can’t help the bitterness in his farewell. 

The door cycles behind him. Something hits it, there’s a muffled cry of pain. He walks away, swallowing another gag back as he passes the coffee station.

Another advertisement with Commander Shepard, this one has a narrator and somehow hurts less. _Shepard was humanity’s best, do you measure up? Can you fill her boots? Ask your recruiter about Alliance infiltrator units today._ His vision blurs and he lets the crowd take him forward. He’s been here, it’s been a couple years but...the signage is there and he’s swinging into the first public restroom he can find and barely makes it to a closed stall before he’s throwing up. 

He’s still coughing up bile a few minutes later, when his omni pings insistently.

The lights of the bathroom are starting to halo on him. He takes a few minutes, breathes, calms his heart rate, trying to resist what he knows is coming. He might have a couple hours. Maybe three. Maybe enough to get to whatever bunk they’ve assigned him. 

Anderson’s waiting at a table at the back of the room. He looks thinner than Kaidan recalls, the posture is looser. His eyes are a little bloodshot, as if he isn’t sleeping. 

He looks a lot like Kaidan feels. 

Anderson had known Aedan since she was a kid, since she was stealing cars and swiping credit chits. How hard has this been on him? The salute comes easily when he catches Anderson’s eye.

“I’m glad I caught you, Kaidan. How are you? I’ve been worried.” He sounds sincere as they sit back down.

“I’m... fine, sir, thank you.” Kaidan doesn’t even try to sound fine. “If you don’t mind, Captain...what about you?

Anderson releases a breath and shrugs. “I’ve been better, Alenko, not going to pretend otherwise. I...she was a part of my life for a long time and I had...hopes for her.”

“Yeah.” Kaidan had known her for months. He’d had some hopes, too. “She... I hope this isn’t out of line, sir. You meant a lot to her, she always said.”

He snorts. “Never to me. She never did manage to put that sort of thing into words, well. but yeah, I know. Thank you. Might be just us and the recruitment office that remembers her by the end of the year.”

He sounds bitter. Kaidan expects he’s seen the advertisements, too. 

“I wanted to give you a heads up. I’m not sure what they have planned for you, Kaidan. I’ve tried to find out, give it some direction, but I’m being shouldered aside; collared as Udina’s Alliance go-between. They’ve reassigned me permanently to the Citadel.” 

“I thought for sure you’d get another ship, sir.”

“Yeah, so did I. Apparently not. I’m hoping this is Hackett’s way of making sure he’s got a foot in the door for any new information about the Reapers. But I can’t be sure, I’m locked out. Keeping me on the Citadel is a nice sidedoor. Keeps me out of the chain of command, keeps the secrets pinned down.“ 

“I’ve wondered. The Normandy’s surviving crew is all pretty scattered.”

“You looked?”

“Yes, sir. Shepard would’ve wanted me...her last orders were to keep an eye on the crew. I’m gonna do my best.”

“So you’ve heard about Joker?” Anderson’s eyes are a little sharper now and Kaidan does his best not to fidget under the glare.

“Yeah. Uh, yes, sir.”

“I see. They may be about to send you dirtside, Alenko. The Council is burying the whole idea of the Reapers. For now, I’m not sure we have a choice but to go along with it. Alliance has reassigned everyone else involved with the events at the Citadel. You’re the last wild card. Ferrars is N7 but she's also intelligence. If I had to guess, she’s here to make sure you aren’t going to be shoving the idea of Sovereign all over the place wherever they send you. I’ve tried to find out. I thought...well, never mind what I thought. Clearly not an option now.” 

“Ok.” He’s a little bewildered. Who the hell is Ferrars?

“Kaidan, the Alliance is burying more than just the Normandy crew. They’ve reassigned over a dozen people who were at the Battle, already, to operations dirtside or out in the deep-anyone who raises the least mention of Reapers. They’re trying to silence anyone who speaks up.”  
The announcement of a passenger cruiser boarding interrupts Anderson’s growl and the captain shakes his head, the fierceness draining out of his solid frame.

“That’s my flight. I’d hoped to have a little more time.” He reaches out and squeezes Kaidan’s shoulder, surprising him. “She thought...I could tell. There was something between you. I’m sorry you didn’t have time with it. Time to let her figure it out.” 

Oh god. “Me, too, sir.” He squares up and salutes again. Anderson returns it, slowly. 

“Keep in touch, son. I’ll try to keep an ear out.”

Kaidan sits, long enough for a waitperson to ask him if he needs anything. He almost waves her off but the warning light reminds him and he asks for a bowl of whatever soup they’ve got. He pats his pockets and finds the emergency pack of anti-nausea meds and swallows them, dry.

A few minutes later, there’s a warm bowl of reasonably well seasoned vegetable soup in front of him. He forces himself to eat it, trying to pretend he’s savoring the creamy texture instead of being careful with his stomach as the tables around him fill for lunch. He’s braced to have to share his table, quiet and tucked into the back as it is. He’s left to himself, though, and the ebb and flow of the conversation around him isn’t terrible. It feels...almost right. Comfortable. 

Kaidan’s orders had been updated as soon as he hit Arcturus, a time and office number in the Alliance offices. Even with the futile trip to the hospital and Anderson cornering him in the Mess, he’s a few minutes early when he walks back. He glances past the office where he'd been before. The office he's being sent to is deeper in and he passes a couple of Marines who check his orders and ask for a handprint. He obliges, warily.

He's almost to the end of the hall when it opens into a large space with a hum from several haptic displays, monitors with a dozen maps. A half dozen enlisted staff and three more noncoms are head down in their work but another set of doors is flanked by a desk with a briskly efficient yeoman who lifts their chin to draw his attention. "Lieutenant Commander Alenko?" 

He returns her salute, trying not to look as lost as he feels as they hurry him back to a relatively lavish sitting room, with deep leather chairs and another desk.

The staff corporal seated there salutes, takes his orders, nods and keys the appointment mechanically, before looking back up with a more attentive smile. “Admiral Hackett will be with you momentarily, sir.”

“Admiral…?” Kaidan’s more than a little stunned. He’s never even met the admiral.

“Is there a problem, Lieutenant Commander?”

“No, I just didn’t realize I was...I just came in for new orders.” 

“Yes, sir. Admiral Hackett is expecting you.” He gives Kaidan an assessing glance and he suddenly wonders if he’d spilled tomato on the new jacket, but the corporal gives him an approving nod as the monitor on his tidy desk pings. “If you’ll go this way.” He points to the door, where the holo has just turned green.

“Okay, then. Thanks, Corporal uh, Kanady.”

The admiral is seated at his desk, as the door cycles open. It’s not an ostentatious office, a plain dark wooden desk with a model of the Cairo sitting on the edge. 

There are a few static pictures on the wall; the usual brag wall stuff. Hackett with various dignitaries in different stages of his career. Kaidan can’t help but hone in on the one with a dark coppery red head at the center. Shepard, after her Star of Terra. Both men tower over her, but the clear focus of the picture is her square shouldered figure and the deep well of pure energy she always carries...carried with her. Anderson looking like he was going to burst with pride on her left side, their posture almost identical. Maybe Shepard had been used to this sort of company, but Kaidan is way out of his depth. He tries to quietly roll his neck and shift some of the gathering tension that's only going to get him in worse trouble. Why is he in an Admiral's office? Are they trying to warn him off? 

Hackett looks up as the corporal announces him and Kaidan snaps to attention, with a salute. 

Hackett stands to return the salute and waves Kanady away. As the door shuts, Hackett rumbles in his gravel edged tones. “Lieutenant Commander, at ease. Before Colonel Ferrars joins us, I want to apologize.”

“Sir?” He can’t quite manage at ease.

“I want to apologize for not being at the memorial. You’re the ranking officer left off the Normandy and I owe you that. The politics of this moment are over riding the honor we owed Shepard. And the only reason I’m okay with that is that I know she’d understand it.”

“Would she?” God, he hadn’t even... he _hadn’t_ realized that Anderson had been the ranking officer there, he’d been so tunneled out. “Excuse me, sir.”

“No. I understand. This whole thing has been…” he cuts himself off. “The Fifth is in a bad spot, Alenko and I’ve got to focus my efforts there, rebuilding. There are steps we need to take and you are gonna have to be part of it. Maybe a major part.”

An indicator light flashes on the monitor, just at the admiral's left hand. “Yes, Kanady?”

“Colonel Ferrars, sir.”

“Send her in.” The corporal opens the door and escorts a tall, solidly built, dark skinned woman into the room, handing her a thin, black data pad with a fine blue stripe down the back. 

Kaidan comes to attention and after she returns his salute, waits for the Admiral to return hers. “Sir. Thank you for arranging this.”

“My pleasure, Colonel. Both of you have a seat, and let’s get started. I’m sure Alenko would like to know why he’s on the carpet.”

“Of course.” She turned to Kaidan and in a clipped accent asks, “ Lieutenant Commander, everything we speak of in this office is strictly need to know, do you understand?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know why Commander Shepard was assigned to the Normandy?”

The high speed switch throws him, but he manages to answer, “Other than her excellent service record and Captain Anderson’s recommendation? No, ma’am.” 

There’s scepticism in Ferrars’ raised eyebrow but she continues easily, “Before she was being scoped by the Council as a potential SPECTRE, Shepard was frequently- unofficially- asked to assess crews, make recommendations based on her own observations. She had her official assignments, of course, as a Scout and reconnaissance expert, and all of her assignments were based on that. The nose for talent was something her mentor, your former Captain Anderson, pointed out and we had been looking at using her in that capacity as she advanced. Being made a SPECTRE, while of course was a great thing for humanity, was looked in these halls as,“ she paused and added diplomatically, “something of a loss.” 

They seemed to be waiting for him to comment. “I see.” Seemed to be the safest thing to say. He added, “The commander always made out that her position in the Alliance was more important to her than being a SPECTRE, ma’am.”

Ferrars frowned at him and looked down at the black data pad on her knee. “It seems the Council found her to be as much of a nuisance as a tool. Her insistence on the Reaper threat, for instance.”

He takes a moment before he answers, cautiously. “I wouldn’t know, ma’am. I wasn’t privy to any conversations the commander had with the council, other than what I’ve reported on.”

“Hmm. She didn’t take you into her confidence?”

“If she did, ma’am, I’m not sure what relevance it has here.” There’s a low ache starting to spread out from the inion at the base of his skull, just below his amp. He was starting to realize why Aedan came out of her political meetings ready to shoot everything in her way. Attempting to quietly loosen his shoulders, Kaidan breathed in, slowing the heartrate that was trying to gallop away with him as he added the information up. Shepard was scouting him. She was...and never told him. Not even after...

Hackett steps in, “Alenko, what the Colonel is pointing at is that Shepard was instrumental in the assignment we’re about to offer you. I know there are some rumors floating around that HQ is trying to bury the officers who survived the Normandy. I want you to know that, regardless of what happened at Alchera, this position would have been offered to you. I want you to consider that.”

“Sir, I’ve never been in the position to decide on what my orders should be.” 

Hackett’s blunt reply pulls him back to attention. “You aren’t now.” Tapping a stack of thin black data pads he adds, “You can take this or you can be reassigned to a ship as commander of another Marine unit. Eventually, when we have new ships to commission.”

Which would be stagnation, despite his promotion. _They are going to pass you over, if you don’t go_. Had she tried to tell him? She’d broken regs just telling him that much.

“In pushing HQ to promote you, Shepard also guaranteed that you would come to the top of our list for a new position that’s been a few years in the making. I wouldn’t have put it past her to know that. She did usually know how the wind was blowing here at HQ, despite the fact that we very rarely saw her.”

Aedan. Commander Shepard. The infiltrator operative. The Hero of the Blitz. The SPECTRE. How many damned hats had she been wearing? 

Ferrars continues, “Alenko, the Alliance thinks it’s time we made a more concerted effort to single out significant biotics that would be best placed with a new spec ops grouping. We need to know what they need in the field, what parameters they can operate under, how far we can push them without destroying them. You, in the recent events, have proven far more capable and adaptive than we honestly expected any human biotic to be. As one of the more functional L2’s you are somewhat unique but we need more like you. Grissom’s Ascension Project, along with good eyes in the field, has been singling out more -unique- individuals as they come across them. We’ve got a good dozen, now.”

She reaches across and shows him the screen of the pad in her hand. It’s a file, a list of service numbers running down the screen. Shepard probably would have had them memorized with a glance. They’re safer from him. “These aren’t children, students. These are trained soldiers, Marines like you’ve been handling in smaller units who have passed their training at Grissom, gone through Basic, shown aptitude for advancement and served in smaller units.”

“I don’t have to tell you, biotics don’t have the best reputation as dependable soldiers, despite the success you and a few others have had. We need that to change. Your service under an N7, her commendation, and your record as a commander of Marines leads us to think that you would be a good commanding officer for those troops.

At the moment we foresee a whole unit of fire squads. We want you to look at the best arrangements, if there are specialties we should be training at Grissom. If we get the right funding, we’ll be putting squads in every platoon, biotic spec ops trained to be frontline and forward.” She glances at Hackett and shrugs, her pitch finished.

Hackett fixes Kaidan with a light eyed stare. Suddenly he wonders if Shepard had taken lessons from the Admiral, too. “What do you think, Alenko?”

Kaidan swallows. With Anderson’s warning and what had happened to Shepard he’d been expecting to be shoved behind a desk and buried on a colony like Ashley. This is not that. Or…? 

“This is an amazing offer, Admiral. I’m honored you considered me.” He’s trying to buy time and they can tell it. He grimaces as Ferrars laughs cooly.

“Please, Lieutenant Commander, don’t be modest. Biotics, no- Marines like you are exactly what we need out in the galaxy, showing humanity’s best foot forward. You’re a poster boy, Alenko. You’re strong, you’re pretty, you’ve got a good background story. We need people like you up front, making the case for humanity’s potential.” 

Even as he tries hard not to blush, he can almost hear Aedan drawl in his ear _that's a big shovel, must be a pile of shit, somewhere_ . “There are _some_ skeletons in my closet, ma’am.”

“You mean the turian?” His nod earns him a shrug. “ _Please_. In most ward rooms, a dead turian is a plus in your favor. All those “cool under fire” commendations balance it out. We’ve got footage of you working very well with the turian who served on the Normandy...Vakarian?” 

Kaidan nods. 

“Ostensibly, you’ll be under me and we are, officially, under the wing of the Fifth. In reality, you and I are about to create a whole new branch of the Systems Alliance Marines. You’ll get the promotions you need, as you need them to put the best face forward. Right now, Lieutenant Commander is senior enough to be taken seriously, far enough under the radar that you’ll have the time you need to work out the kinks. If all goes to plan, Commander shouldn’t be far down the road.” 

Hackett continued, “In the long term, we want this to be an N level training scenario, which is why Ferrars is in the lead. Right now, human biotics can’t be sent to N school.” 

“From what Shepard said, the calorie deficit alone would have sent me into shock by the second day of training.” 

“Exactly.” Ferrars agrees. “We’ve had scientists looking at this but nothing beats boots on the ground. Real experience like you have in extreme conditions. If this works out, we could have an alternate route specifically for biotics. At some point, we could merge the programs but even if not, this is a step in the right direction.”

“Do you understand why we want this now, Alenko?” Hackett asks him. 

“I have my suspicions, sir.” The only reason to shift something like this into gear, right now. The Reapers were coming. Someday.

Ferrars chuckles, almost warmly. “Shepard said you were smart, too.”

He has to ask, “You knew the Commander, ma’am”

She nods. “We’d met- in N school. Worked in a parallel path once or twice. I was being read in on certain reports. She didn’t work with many people. She understood them. Could use them. Damn fine leader. But only for short periods. The fact that she did so well on the Normandy was a surprise.”

“In certain circles.” Hackett added.

“She followed a very narrow path, Alenko. It’s not a route we expect every Marine to take, but she forged it well. You’re being offered...shall we say, a different route to a similar goal. No matter what the future holds, we need human biotics to get us there.”

Hackett cleared his throat, “Alenko, I want to be clear, this was not a sudden decision. We were scouting you for this before you were placed on the Normandy but there was some concern you didn’t have the necessary...self motivation to be lead on this. The politics were sensitive as well, but thanks to other developments- some you were involved in- that’s lessened. 

Kyle. That negotiator. All that had been Shepard, he'd just been a witness. Or had she brought him to those on purpose? God, he hated second guessing her motives.

"You played your early career very safe. Commander Shepard and her advocacy of your abilities was a vital link in our decision to advance you."

They're fishing.

“I’m...honored that she thought so highly of me, sir. She ...was a fine person. It means a lot.”  
The fact that it wasn’t just their relationship she’d been focused on but the good of the Alliance...his career? But there was something in this offer that didn’t sit right. Anderson had warned him for a reason.

“Will we be based out of Arcturus, sir? Or Grissom?” There’s got to be something.

“No.” Hackett answers bluntly. “The presence of the number of high ranked human biotics would draw attention here and we’re concerned with making Grissom an even more obvious military target. We’re keeping this quiet for the moment. We’d rather have a done deal to set before our allies and our enemies. We’ve got a location on Earth, in North Africa, that's remote enough to allow for secrecy but within reason for easy transport.”

And _there’s_ the kink in the chain. Not in space. He doesn’t have Shepard’s ability to project a good face for the brass. 

Something shows and Hackett asks, “You’ve got an objection?”

“A...concern," he concedes cautiously. "If we’re based on Earth…?” 

“That is entirely for reasons of secrecy. You think we’re grounding you?”

“I…” he clenches his teeth, trying not to give his worry away. 

“Speak freely, Alenko.” It’s almost a barked order. 

Kaidan raises his eyebrow at that, swallows, and recalls Aedan standing like a sentinel on the podium, a blaze of truth against the fear and denial of the Council. He squares his shoulders and ignores the way the light in the office is starting to shimmer around the edges. “Yes, sir. I am worried that the Normandy crew has been completely dismantled and that the officers are all in positions where they won’t be able to make waves about the Reapers, that Commander Shepard’s efforts are going to be wasted so that the Systems Alliance can bury their heads in the sand. 

I want what you’re offering. I think it’s an _amazing_ opportunity. But I would be….disloyal, to the Commander and to my oath as an officer sworn to defend my homeworld if I did not bring up the fact that it’ll make it real hard for me to speak out if I’m running a secret operation and I think that’s on purpose.”

“Not going to give us the benefit of the doubt that we might just have reshuffled until we have the ships to put everyone on and in the meantime, we’re trying to put some square pegs in some not quite round holes?”

In for a pound? “Commander Shepard had every faith in the Alliance structure, sir, until it failed her and buried her with the barest of honors and started plastering her image all over space. I’m not quite so lucky as to have that same faith.”

If they court martial him, maybe he can blame it on the migraine.

Hackett’s got both bushy white eyebrows raised. There’s surprise and something else in his voice when he finally replies. “Serving under Shepard really did loosen you up, didn’t it?”

“You did tell him to speak freely, Admiral.” Colonel Ferrars isn’t quite smiling but there are crinkles at the corners of her eyes he hadn’t noticed, before. 

The old man shakes his head. “So I did. This is a long term project, Alenko. If the Reapers are coming," Kaidan starts to object and Hackett cuts him off, "If they come _tomorrow_ , we're done. If they hold off for a year or two we _might_ be able to slow them down. You can be a part of that or you can yell your head off and not help at all. Cause a galactic panic, at best. Shepard was a pain in the Council's neck but she was looking at the future when she made her recommendations. It's not going to be a glamorous post. Right now, you’re organizing. Right now, you’re writing blue papers and interviewing potential squad members and then training those members. You are the first official recruit for this project and you will definitely be a part of the Special Operations. There will be assignments, mostly off world, if you’re up to it. We can read you in on a few more things, once you’re up to speed here.”

Ferrars stands up. “For obvious reasons, we need you in on this now, Alenko. Yes or no. Fast track or back to just another good soldier?” She holds out the black data pad. 

He can almost hear Aedan cackling in his ear, driving the Mako off another damned cliff. “Yes, sir. Ma’am. Yeah, I’m in.”

**Author's Note:**

> The epilogue has turned into its own story, so here we close. On a high note that I think Kaidan deserves. <3 Thank you all for reading!


End file.
